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Archive for May, 2012

However, it doesn’t really feel as hot as it might. I read Neil Strauss’ book ‘Emergency‘ about a year ago (I could have sworn I wrote a review on it, but I’ve checked the archive and can’t find it!), and while it was a little overtly political for my taste (and not the good kind), it has some good bits of information for the novice prepper. One which I try to take to heart is where he talks about forgoing his heating and air conditioning, on the premise that in many disaster scenarios, one may be without them for an extended period of time. While I haven’t go so far as to rip out our air conditioning unit, we do set our thermostats a little different than many folks I know. In the summer, we’ve taken to leaving the thermostat at 80 during the day, and about 76 at night. In the winter, we leave it at about 55 degrees. My wife doesn’t always agree, but what we’ve found is that your body can and will become accustomed to a wide variety of temperatures, if you just let it. Considering we used to keep it at 68 in the winter and 70 in the summer ‘to be comfortable’, the fact that we rarely notice the temperature anymore only tells me we were throwing money away on heating and cooling costs.

It’s like the New Englanders who visit Florida in the winter and wonder why the natives have windbreakers on while they are in shorts. Working in the warehouse has started to affect me much the same way, and I’m grateful. It’s not well insulated so its usually only about 5-8 degrees cooler than outside, and its gotten pretty hot the last month or so. I went to a wedding a few weeks back…to a person, everyone complained about the heat, and many were sweating. It was about 82 degrees, and I found the temperature just mild.

I’d recommend folks whose air conditioning or heat runs constantly to try raising the thermostat in the summer by 5 degrees and lowering it by 5 degrees in the winter for 3 weeks. My bet is at the end of that time, you won’t feel any more or less warm or cool, but you will notice yourself saving money on your utilities.

On to the updates!:

We are very excited to announce we will be doing our first official Food Storage info-sharing get together in Harrison, AR the weekend of June 15, sponsored by a local store. We’ll be bringing a trailer load of bags and buckets (partially so we can still get orders out in the timeframe customers expect!), but also so folks who want to pick up supplies ‘shipping-cost free’ can save a bunch. We’re going to do a flat 20% off our website prices on everything, so I hope we’ll see you there if you are in the area! We may also be stopping by Calico Rock, AR that weekend as well. I’ll provide the details here and on Facebook (Go Like ‘Advice and Beans’ for our Facebook page) once they are nailed down.

We finally got our newest website, a Long Term Food Storage Calculator, up and running. For folks who ever wondered what they should store to cover a particular period of time, please stop by and give it a try! There’s a free version that lets you run the calculator and store your results, and a very modestly priced Premium version ($3/mo) with some more advanced features including being able to run reports as well as add your own items and categories.

Slowly but surely, I am getting our first official Youtube video done. Our video series will be called ‘Spill the Beans’, and I’ll be answering questions and providing some info I don’t think you can find anywhere else. Plus, I’ll be channelling my inner geek, but you’ll have to wait and see to find out what that means! The first episode will be on oxygen indicator tablets and what they are and aren’t good for. I hope to have the first video ready by the end of June. As I get used to using the video-editing software, I hope they’ll come out quicker after that, maybe every 2-3 weeks.

As part of the seminar we are doing, I am writing what I consider to be the ‘Essential 8 Pages About Food Storage’ booklet. Once its ready I’ll be doing a short print run (maybe 250 copies for version 1). I’ll be giving them away with large orders, otherwise they’ll probably be just a couple bucks. It will contain all the info a novice food storer will need to get started. As an FYI, all the information in the booklet is available free here in the archives, so don’t worry about missing anything, I’m just combining it into a easy-to-read format.

As our base of small commercial customers has grown quite a bit, we are establishing a Preferred Merchant Program. It includes the best wholesale pricing we can offer, plus we’ll be offering perks such as ‘at cost’ pricing of items such as the Food Storage pamphlet as well as seminars and demos for your customers. (For those within 800 miles or so of Nashville) Folks who carry our products in survival/prep stores, gun shops, and Army/Navy stores have seen close to 100% sellthrough with some excellent margins.

That’s all for now, thanks for stopping by! As always, you can reach me at admin@discountmylarbags.com with any questions or comments!